Usable Usability by Eric Reiss published!

Usable Usability by Eric Reiss has just been published on Amazon.com. Wow, this caught me off guard. I had this book listed for a July publication, even Wikipedia did, better update that Eric *wink*. I was going to post about the publication next week, like I have been doing the previous months along with other UX books.

Eric Reiss, for those of you who don’t know him and the name doesn’t even ring a far distant bell, is a well-respected figure in the Information Architecture community. Personally, I have only met and heard him speak once at the EuroIA last year in Prague. Eric, author of many books on the subject of IA, is a person who can convey the message of IA importance very well. He is a thought provoker/instigator who, through his books, insights, and presentations can trigger your interest in IA and make even the most helpless structured website seem improvable (<– I had to look up that word, I thought I was making it up…).

Usable Usability

In his latest book Usable Usability, Eric focusses on sharing tips and techniques with us that, and I quote, “will help ensure happy customers and successful products”. True, it is not the first book that tries to do this, but since the release of Steve Krug’s ‘Don’t Make Me Think’ I don’t think that there have been many books that try to link usability insights to the level of understanding of your every day online professional.

The quick bullet point synopsis from Amazon tells us…

Reveals proven tools that simply make products better, from the users’ perspective

Provides simple guidelines and checklists to help you evaluate and improve your own products

Zeroes in on essential elements to consider when planning a product, such as its functionality and responsiveness, whether or not it is ergonomic, making it foolproof, and more consistency, and predictability

It is the last bullet point that gets my attention. Either Eric has come up with a new list of words to use in EuroIA’s next round of bullshit bingo (like they did in Prague) or he is really on to something. I mean… logicalness, that is a word that I would definitely like to bring to the attention of many Execs. There is not enough of it in ecommerce these days, where everybody is just looking for that quick win, the quick buck.

Kindle Friendly?

If you are considering buying Eric Reiss’ Usable Usability, then please read this blog post and the Twitter conversation below between Eric Reiss and Marcin Treder. Hopefully you will reconsider and buy the print version.

Matthew works as Conversion Optimisation Manager at Ziggo BV. In his free time he enjoys family life as well as digging into online user research material whilst frequently generating some of his own, which he freely shares here on actualinsights.com.